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‘We are made to love, not to fall in love’


This post was published on Saturday 24 March 2018.

I was listening to a programme about Debussey called ‘Perfect Husband, Pitiable Artist’ on Radio 4 the other day.   It was exploring whether he loved anyone except himself, his genius - eventually coming to the conclusion that the only woman he ever really loved was his daughter.

They explored his relationships, his affairs - and how he blamed his music for the way he seduced all those women.   He seems to have been desperately unhappy, finding fulfilment neither in his music, nor in his affairs.

One of the contributors was Laetitia Sadier, who said this:

You know specifically on the theme of love and relationships, I wrote a song on my last album called ‘Love Captive’, and I did interrogate the issue of long-term relationships, and how - ok, well, we’ve been together for ten years, twenty years, and I would like to have other adventures with other people - keep myself open to other people, while still being with you because you are are my special one.   I tried it out in my own life, and it was a disaster!

So it was good because I learnt a lot from that.   I learnt that perhaps the idea of ‘free love’ as we can imagine it - keeping oneself open sexually and emotionally to other people - is kind of flawed in a way, that in fact the real freedom lies in the trust you will confer to your partner, and that in return they trust you unconditionally.   That is the real freedom, that is free love.

It’s beyond selfishness here, we’re talking another level of being in a relationship with someone and not seeing it as like a prison, you know, or being done or being captured, you know as a ‘Love Captive’, you know, as being captive to someone.

There is a line in that song which expresses all that in ten beautiful words:

We are made to love, not to fall in love.